ENG LIT: Duchess of Malfi AO5

What did Marcus suggest about audiences and the Duchess?

• “audience support was very much with the Duchess”

• A Jacobean audience would not have condemned her decision to remarry as Protestant faith permitted it - it is simply her brother that is limiting her (Oakes)

• Modern audience would equally support her because of her treatment of marriage and strength

What does Callaghan argue about the Duchess’ marriage?

• It is “perpetually clandestine” and we as the audience are drawn to it

• However Adam and Eve’s relationship is less so as it is permitted and in fact created by the will of God

What does T.S Eliot argue about Webster and death?

• He was “much possessed by death”

What does Dolan argue about secrecy in the play?

• The relationship between Antonio and the Duchess provokes our desire to know and invites us to question that desire

What does R.S White suggest about the Duchess?

she “achieves heroism through her death”

What does CV Boyer say about Bosola?

• he is “too wicked for us to lament his fall”

• Marxists may challenge this or a contemporary Jacobean audience may also challenge this

How may marxists read into Bosola’s character?

• May view him sympathetically

• He, as the malcontent, is an underappreciated character due to his lowly status despite being a “fantastical scholar”

• He could then be read as the main character as he appears in all the scenes and speaks the most

What does William Archer say about Bosola?

• He is the “most human of villains”

• We are not encourages to view him as a villain at all

What does Elizabeth Oakes suggest about the Duchess’ transgressive nature?

• She behaves in a way “congruent with her society but not with her brother’s wishes”

• Suggests that society would not have detested the Duchess remarrying due to increasingly Protestant values but rather it is only the wishes of her brother she is transgressing

• Therefore she is not fully deserving of the death she has

• “He, not her society, is condemning her to a life of solitude”

What does Callaghan suggest about the Duchess?

• She defies social convention “not through infidelity but through marriage”

• She puts her “body natural” over her “body politic”

• Duchess is thus selfish and ignores her courtly role and is punished for this negligence

What did Brecht’s 1946 production of the Duchess of Malfi highlight?

• Ferdinand’s obsession with his sister’s “face” and “heart”

• Shows that Webster presents Catholics as selfish, doing things that fulfil their desires

What does Orazio Busino argue about the play?

It is purely “in condemnation of the grandeur of the Catholic church”

What does Rabkin argue about the Duchess’ courtship of Antonio?

• It is “wilful, wanton and irresponsible”

• This challenges Marcus’ and Oakes’ support of the Duchess

What does Brooke argue about the end?

“the end is a maze of death and madness”

How does the 2024 Sam Wanamaker production challenge the Duchess’ defiant nature?

• She is portrayed by a dwarf thus is significantly smaller than the rest of the cast

• This makes it difficult to assert the expected defiance she perpetuates in the script however this does maintain the traditional power dynamic between her and Ferdinand

What elements does the 2024 Trafalgar Theatre production of the Duchess explore and not explore?

• Explores masculinity and how they are often frail and need to be given direction - Antonio is feeble and belittles himself greatly in the production

• Duchess is hyper-sexualised, in a red dress and sings seductively at the opening of the performance

• Production loses the political intrigue that is central to the play

What does the Almeida production highlight?

• Corruption

• The duchess is covered in black blood showing how she cannot escape the corrupt court as corruption runs in her own blood